


Moonshine

by ThanksForListening



Series: Hair Ties and Lullabies [4]
Category: Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Genre: Drinking, F/F, Fluff, Mostly Fluff, bc im a monster, but am i posting it? yes, drunk Birds of Prey, im so sorry about this already, its so dumb its so stupid, listen..., slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:35:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23619121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThanksForListening/pseuds/ThanksForListening
Summary: Helena gets tipsy for the first time. She doesn't hate it.
Relationships: Helena Bertinelli/Dinah Lance
Series: Hair Ties and Lullabies [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1644340
Comments: 14
Kudos: 145





	Moonshine

**Author's Note:**

> okay so did i get tipsy last night and write this all at 1 am before literally passing out? yes. did i edit it in the morning once i was no longer tipsy? not really. am i kinda ashamed of it? yes. am i still posting it? of course. 
> 
> (pls don't judge me too harshly for both the fic and the fact that im 22 and last night was the first time i ever got tipsy.)

The last time Helena drank, she was fourteen. Sal and Luca always had red wine with dinner, could go through multiple glasses a night without acting any different than normal. They’d offered it to her once, and she’d made a face as she tried it, had put the glass down and left it alone for the rest of her training. 

But now she was in her apartment, the rest of the girls were here, and they were handing out glasses. She was about to protest but Dinah said she thought she would like it, and she was looking at her with those eyes that made her melt inside, so she took the glass, brought it to her lips and discovered that she could — at the very least — tolerate white wine. She could take sips as Harley took shots and Renee drank something brown (whiskey? Bourbon? She wasn’t sure and certainly wasn’t about to ask), could try and match pace with Dinah as she sipped her own red wine. 

That had been two hours ago, and all the sips must have added up because now her head felt kinda funny and her fingers felt tingly, and if she focused too much on one thing it started to blur. She tried to switch what she looked at, keep her eyes moving, but she kept landing on Dinah, and even when she became blurry she was still so pretty that Helena didn’t want to look away. 

She kept thinking about her, too. About how nice she was. How she always did things that made her feel warm inside. She thought about how beautiful Dinah’s voice was, how she sang all the time and Helena had spent a lifetime getting used to the silence but as long as it was Dinah singing she never wanted to have a quiet moment ever again. 

“Crossbow, you doing alright?” She blinked and Dinah came back into focus. She was looking at her again, with the smile that meant Helena was doing something funny on accident. It had taken her a while to figure out what that one meant, and a small part of her felt self-conscious when she saw it, but Dinah never made fun of her. It seemed to make her happy, and Helena wanted nothing more than to make Dinah happy.

“Ohhhh my god, please tell me Helena is drunk.”

“Helena is not drunk, stupid, _you’re_ drunk.”

“Shut up, you’re _both_ drunk.” Helena didn’t want to follow the whole conversation so she just kept her eyes on Dinah, let Harley and Renee do whatever it was they were doing on the floor. “And I’m not taking care of you if one of you losers puke, so you better pull yourselves together.”

Helena listened to Renee and Harley giggle at Dinah’s threat, and she felt like she wanted to laugh too, so she did. It was funny how easy it was, so she kept going. She saw Dinah smile and she laughed more, and she couldn’t remember laughing like this ever, not even before. As she stared at her, she didn’t know what she was more drunk on — the wine or Dinah’s smile. 

“I don’t think I’ve heard you laugh this much since the time Harley stole my car.” Helena laughed at the memory, even though she’d discovered after the fact that friends stealing friends’ cars was apparently _not_ funny. “Glad it amused someone,” Dinah said, and Helena tried to stop laughing because this _wasn’t funny,_ except then Harley started laughing which made her start laughing and she tried to hold it in until she saw Dinah smile and then she was gone. 

When she finally caught her breath she took another sip, and the wine wasn’t even good anymore, had been sitting in her glass for too long but she didn’t care. She didn’t want to feel like this forever but she also didn’t want to let go of it just yet. She took her eyes off Dinah for long enough to set her glass down before looking at her again, but this time Dinah was staring back at her, and maybe she was drunker than she thought because she was always staring at her and rarely got caught. 

“See something you like?” Dinah said, and her words were a little slurred and she was still a little blurry but it didn’t matter because the answer to that question was always yes. 

“You’re the only thing that exists right now. You’re the whole world.” Helena didn’t really know what she was saying but the words felt right, and it was so much easier to choose to be confident right now. 

“I’m not the world, I’m just a person.” 

“A person can be the world. You’re like...you’re like the earth, right? And I’m the moon.”

“You sayin I’m fat?” She said it with a smile, which made her think maybe it was a joke, but Helena didn’t always get that right, felt the need to explain herself anyway.

“No, I’m saying you’re, like, full of life, right? You’re blue and green and pretty and I’m not, I’m all grey and I have holes in me and I’m, like, made of space dust or whatever, but I still get to be near you. I—I revolve around you. It’s amazing.”

“Woah, we got an astroma—astorna—a astronomer on our hands,” Renee said, and Helena wanted to laugh at the way she couldn’t say the word right, but Dinah was looking at her funny, so she didn’t. 

“You went to school long enough to learn about space?” Harley mumbled. 

Helena nodded but quickly discovered that nodding was a _bad_ idea. “I got through — I _almost_ got through fourth grade. But I don’t need school, I’m still smart. I know about, fucking, space and shit, and the rest of it doesn’t matter anyway, so I think I’m good.”

Harley and Renee laughed at that, which made her feel nice and warm inside, but Dinah still looked at her weird, and a voice in her head whispered that Dinah looked sad but that was crazy because clearly alcohol did _not_ make you sad. 

She learned that alcohol did, however, make you sleepy, because within a half an hour Renee and Harley were passed out on the floor. She felt her own eyelids, noticed how heavy they were, but before she could get up Dinah said her name. They were sitting on opposite ends of the couch, so that when Helena turned to face her, when she sat with her knees bent and pulled close to her chest, when Dinah sat the same way, they both fit, with hardly any space between them. 

“Why do you think you’re the moon?” Helena felt a little more sober than she did earlier, thought Dinah looked more sober, too, and for some reason that scared her.

“I don’t know.”

“Helena, what do you think about yourself?” Dinah asked, and Helena’s face must have looked as confused as she felt, because she added, “When you look in the mirror, what do you see?”

She felt like this was a trick question. “I see me,” she answered slowly. “I see Helena.”

“And who is that? What makes you Helena.”

Now she was confident it was a trick question, only she didn’t understand how. “I’m Helena because my parents chose to name me Helena instead of Valeria.”

“No, I — fuck. That’s not what I meant.” Dinah put her face in her hand, before pushing her hair back and asking, “Helena, do you hate yourself?”

“Oh.” She felt like this was important, and suddenly she was regretting the wine. She tried her best to think about it. “I don’t think so.”

“You compared yourself to the moon and said you were lifeless and grey and dusty.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I hate myself, does it?” Dinah gave her a look and oh, oh fuck, now she _really_ regretted the wine. “Does it?” The second time she asked her voice got soft, and she felt like her well of confidence was slowly drying up. 

“I don’t know.” 

“Should we ask Harley? I feel like Harley would know the answer.” She felt herself rambling and she didn’t know how to stop. “I know I said I didn’t need school but Harley went to so much school and now she’s really smart and I think maybe we should wake her up and ask her.”

“No, don’t wake Harley. She’s too drunk to do therapy tonight.”

“Oh. Okay.” Helena looked down and now she wanted her car but it was under her pillow, because she’d felt like she didn’t need it as much when she was with the girls but now she needed it, because she didn’t always know much about what people were supposed to be like but she was pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to hate herself. “What...what should we do then?”

“You said,” Dinah started, and she paused to burp which would have been funny if Helena wasn’t trying to figure out if she hated herself or not, “you said you’re the moon, right? But the moon is, like, so much better than how you described it. So maybe you just need to see yourself differently. See yourself the way I see you.”

“How is that?” The voice in her head told her not to ask but she couldn’t really hear it anymore, not when Dinah was looking at her like that, all soft and gentle and sweet. 

“Strong. Beautiful. You know, I learned once that the moon controls the tide, and the waves, or something. Can you believe that? All the way from space, the little moon is out there, strong enough to move the goddamn ocean.” Her eyes widened, and then she smiled really wide and suddenly Helena wasn’t afraid of what she was going to say. “The Earth might be full of life, but it needs the moon to keep it steady. To keep everything alive. And that’s like you and me.”

“Huh.” She had a lot of thoughts but they all swirled in her head, and none of them were clear enough to make out except the one she said out loud. “Maybe I _do_ need more school.”

Dinah started laughing, which made her smile. Dinah grabbed a blanket and threw it at her, and before Helena could protest she got up, went over to the other couch and laid down. Helena turned her head so they could see one another, so their faces were almost closer than they had been before, and for a few minutes they just laid there, smiling at one another. Helena didn’t remember smiling so much before she met her, before she met all of them, but she found that she didn’t hate it. It was actually kind of nice.

Dinah closed her eyes first, and Helena quickly followed. As she drifted off to sleep, she realized they’d never figured out if she hated herself or not. She knew it was important, knew that she should maybe try and make it so that wasn’t something she even had to question, but the thought wasn’t as scary anymore, because she knew Dinah liked her. Maybe even loved her. And maybe she had enough love for the both of them. When she fell asleep she dreamed of space, of the moon and the earth surrounded by stars, pulled together by a force that was too strong to ever be broken, and even as she dreamt she realized Dinah was right: it was beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> welp there it is sorry for all the run-on sentences hope it was at the very least amusing lol if u wanna make fun of me for this do not hesitate to do it here in the comments or on tumblr @thanks--for--listening 
> 
> also sorry that tipsy me was really out here writing some light-hearted fluff before the angst demon in my brain told me to make helena hate herself oops i really cannot be stopped huh


End file.
